Critic Reviews

For its few flaws, Sweetness in the Belly hits plenty of the right notes, featuring a breadth of insight possible only when a filmmaker truly knows the place the story is set.

This is a well-crafted, Bechdel-passing film that prioritizes an intersectional female friendship, yet Lilly remains nothing but our Trojan horse into the 1980s Ethiopian refugee crisis.

Fanning acquits herself, but Amina’s story as a single mother of two and a survivor of brutal sexual violence is the far more necessary story to tell. A main romantic subplot is slighter still.

There’s a floridly sentimental heart fluttering beneath its tastefully solemn surface, but at times, you can’t help wishing the film would give in to its more expressive impulses.

It ticks nearly every box in the checklist of films you wish you could like more than you actually do.